Hi Gram!

I’m back home now, so this will be the last letter from my 2019 road trip adventures. In future letters, I’ll get back to telling you about my everyday adventures. I already have plans for most of this year between traveling, shooting video, attending training, and getting work done on my house, and Zibby is going to be moving to Ottawa this summer so I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun stories. We’ll get to all of that later, though. First, let me catch you up on the final details of my trip.

I got into Florida on Saturday night, with only about ten hours left to drive to Sebastian and five days to get there. After the long drive through Texas and the weather a dismal shade of gray and ick, I decided to pull over for the night and get a warm, dry hotel room in Pensacola. I was near the Navy base at a hotel that catered to visiting families. The pool and lobby at these motels are usually empty by this time of night, but this place was hopping. Business travelers tend to swim early in the morning before running off to their meetings and folks on vacation usually head to lounge at the pool in the afternoon after getting back from their day’s excursion. When I checked in around nine, a few families were gathered around a billiards table in the lobby, some kids were watching TV (the first time I’ve seen a lobby TV used for anything except news or weather), and the swimming pool had probably a dozen people splashing around. This was probably the first time I’ve seen the lobby actually looking like the pictures in their brochure.

After a quick check-in, I drove around to the door closer to my room and carried my bags upstairs. No sooner had I set everything down and turned on a couple lights but I heard a knock at my door. Figuring it was one of the visiting families at the wrong door, I yelled out “I’ll be right there!” and bounded toward the door. I opened it to find two maintenance guys, looking a little haggard like it was closer to the end of their shift than the beginning.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the TV in this room doesn’t work. The room should have been
  listed as unavailable, but our computer system messed up. Would you mind moving
  to the room next door?”
     “That’s alright, guys. I don’t need the TV. I’m probably just going to work on my
       computer for a while tonight and get some sleep.”
“Well, sir, we’re really sorry to inconvenience you, but we need to replace the TV anyway.
  We can help you move your bags over next door.”
     “Oh, it’s no problem. I can get the bags if you need me to move, but if you want to just
       swap out the TV, I don’t mind you coming in and out.  I’ll be up for a while.”
“We’re sorry to ask you to move sir, but it’s hotel policy.  We’ll bring you new keys. You
  won’t have to do anything.”
     “Okay, now worries, let me grab my bags.”

I felt bad for the guys, just trying to get through their work day so they could head home and put their feet up. They came back about five minutes later with new keys and apologies for making me move, and I assured them it was no problem at all. I worked on my computer for a while, answered some emails and chatted with Zibby, and headed to bed.

I woke up early even though I hadn’t set an alarm, so I headed down to the lobby for breakfast. The term “continental breakfast” is interpreted vastly differently from one hotel to another. Some places set out a few granola bars and a pot of coffee. Some places have packaged muffins, juice from the exact same juice machine that you can find at every hotel and some gas stations, and cereal. Hotels near military bases apparently serve sausage, bacon, two kinds of scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs, yogurt, juice (still out of the same machine everybody else uses), a waffle iron, french toast, apples, bananas, oranges, three kinds of coffee, an assortment of tea, milk and water. Most hotels have half a dozen tables with two or three of them, at most, taken by guests at any time. This place had a dozen or more tables with over fifty people (I counted) sitting around a table, standing around chatting, or in line at the breakfast counter. There was a steady stream of new arrivals and families headed back to their rooms. The most amazing thing, though, was that there were no screaming kids or loud talkers and nobody left their trash behind when they left. It was the largest, most well-behaved group that I’ve ever seen in the public area of a hotel in all the years I’ve been traveling! After a good breakfast, I headed back to my room to shower and pack my things and was on my way in no time. I never did turn on that TV.I filled up the gas tank and headed east, passing through a tunnel at one point on my way. The sun was shining and I was working my way through the latest season of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast, Revisionist History. It’s a really interesting idea – each episode, he looks back on something that happened (for example, a court case or the time McDonald’s changed their french fry recipe), delves further into the details, and comes up with an alternate perspective all in a storyteller format. A few hours passed quickly and I was in Jacksonville before I knew it. I pulled over for gas and some lunch, and decided to wash the road grime off of the car while I was there. I stopped in a little Mediterranean fast food joint for a gyro pita. It was a family restaurant that had taken over a building from one of the chain places, probably Long John Silvers from the looks of it. The pita was good, but the cake I got for dessert was a little dry and tasteless. No matter, though, because the best part of Jacksonville is that it feels like you’re making progress as you change highways to I-95 and start heading south instead of east. Excited that I was almost there, I kept my motor runnin and headed down the highway. The sun set as I finished listening to the rest of Revisionist History, and before I knew it I was sitting at a Starbucks in Melbourne. I grabbed a fruity evening beverage, sat at one of their sidewalk tables, and opened my computer to do a little reading. There was a couple on a first date, engaged in a lively Spanish conversation a few tables away, some teenagers giggling and staring at their phones – together at the table, but very alone preoccupied with their devices, and a guy dancing in his chair to the music he had playing on his headphones. At one point, a minivan backed carefully out of a parking spot, jerkily starting and stopping until it backed all the way into the car behind it. It pulled back into the spot quickly and parked, then the young driver walked around looking first at his bumper, then the other car’s bumper, then back to his bumper. He paced back and forth holding his forehead in his hands, unsure of what to do. I closed my laptop and went to calm him down a little. I had him take some deep breaths, then suggested he go inside and ask if anybody owned the car that he hit. I headed back to my table while he went inside and yelled VERY LOUDLY to find the owner of the car. The two of them emerged, inspected bumpers with their phone flashlights, and I presume exchanged information before parting ways. The poor kid probably hadn’t had his license for very long and now had to go home and tell his parents that he’d just banged up their van. I wanted to tell him “listen, kid, these things happen. Nobody was hurt and you’ll get better at driving and parking” but he had left before I thought of it. I did a little more reading, then found a parking spot under some trees, setup my makeshift curtains and sleeping bag, and fell asleep.

I woke up in the morning, grabbed some breakfast, and headed the rest of the way to the dropzone in Sebastian. The last time I was there was probably 2008 or 2009. It had changed a little in the past 10 years, but was still very much the same. I had a few days to kill before my team got there with my gear, but I went into the manifest office to fill out my waiver paperwork and get acquainted with the landing area and airport. I spent the next few hours just kicking back and relaxing on the patio. I got a little reading done, worked on my computer for a bit, said hi to some friends who were jumping, and watched as a couple loads landed. A little after lunch, my friend Dave, one of our pilots, stopped by and invited me to join him and a few of our other friends out on his boat. I packed up my car and followed him to the boat launch where we met the rest of our crew. I wished Heidi a happy birthday and soon we were all talking and laughing together out on the water. We headed to one of the small islands to get a campfire going and have a little dinner while we continued the conversation. A few other friends showed up with their boats and soon we had a little island party going on. The bugs were pretty thick, biting and buzzing around. We tried to stand close to the fire to scare them away, and waded into the water to get away from them, but eventually we decided we were all getting eaten alive. We packed up the boats, put out the fire, and pushed off to open water where the bugs would leave us alone. There was a band playing at one of the bars on the shore, so we shut off the engine and just drifted and listened to the music for a while. Dave, Rook, Steve and Janette called Stump and tried recording some of their podcast, but the wind picked up and soon ruined the recording quality. We headed back to shore as the wind kept increasing and got out of the water before the big storm reached us. Rook and Heidi invited me to stay in their guest room, so we headed back to their house. Heidi started a kid’s movie about a dog for Rocket, and Rook joked that he’d be asleep soon and we’d get sucked into the story line and end up watching the rest of it. Sure enough, Rocket’s eyelids were getting heavy and Heidi put him to bed while Rook and I sat there and watched the rest of it before getting tired ourselves and heading to sleep.

I slept in a little in the morning, ran some errands with Rook, then drove them to the airport to fly home to the tundra of Illinois. I picked up some groceries on the way back to the house, then spent the next couple days reading and watching movies. My team started showing up on Thursday. I got my gear from Doug (I’d shipped it to him before starting my road trip), put my camera helmet back together and made sure everything was ready to go, and brought my rig to manifest to verify my reserve pack date. I helped Doug straighten up the team room a little, then headed back to the house to rest up, knowing the next few days were going to be tiring. Friday morning, we met at the airport and got our training started. It was great seeing the guys again and joking around for a bit before Doug, our coach, gathered everyone to get the day started. We have fun when we get together for training weekends. Once we walked into the training room, everyone got their focus on and I could almost see the gears shift from “goofball” to “teammate” in each of them. They walked through the engineering it takes to launch their four bodies from a plane as a single unit, then we went up in the plane so they could show my camera the same thing at 120mph.

Our team competes in 4-way formation skydiving, which I’ve heard described as sort of a team race – once they leave the plane, they have thirty five seconds to cycle through a pre-determined set of formations that I capture on video. Other teams cycle through the same set of formations, earning a point for each successful formation. The judges look at the video and tally up each team’s points. We repeat that multiple times, completing a different set of formations for each round. After six to ten rounds, the team with the highest overall score wins. I’m the camera guy, flying above them with cameras mounted to my helmet to document everything. One of the things I love about flying camera is that I deploy my parachute higher than the rest of the team to achieve vertical separation. That gives me time to just fly around and look down on all of the beauty below me. It’s great to look out over the ocean, tiny little speedboats dashing to and fro, or seeing the subdivisions all neatly laid out with their winding roads and houses. I’ve seen so many things from under my parachute over the years such as watching the plane take off with the next set of jumpers, seeing smoke stacks a few towns over, or looking at the farm fields laid out like squares in an afghan blanket with swirled dancing patterns formed by the wind.

The weather and conditions were almost perfect on Friday and Saturday, with slow and steady winds, blue skies, and a comfortable seventy five degrees. We had a couple of weather holds as clouds rolled through, but they kept rolling by and soon we were back to jumping. We finished each day with a team dinner, where we laughed and chatted about our experiences, then said goodnight so we could all get some sleep to prepare for the next day. Sunday was predicted to have more clouds, and the weatherman got that one right. We got a couple jumps in the morning before a layer of clouds shuffled in and they brought a whole lineup of their friends behind them. We reviewed the video from the weekend, watched video of Rhythm – a professional team that serve as our mentors, and talked about how the weekend went for each of us, noting what we’d learned and what we each wanted to work on. Doug decided the weather didn’t look like it was going to improve, so we called it a day and each gathered up our gear and packed our cars. After saying goodbye to everyone, I headed back to the house to clean up after myself and pack my car for the trip home. I planned to drive until I got tired that night, then pull over and finish the trip on Monday but with my bed that I hadn’t slept in for over two months waiting for me at home, I didn’t get tired for a long time. I passed through Atlanta in the early evening and got through Nashville in the middle of the night before pulling over for a nap. I slept for an hour or two before I was too excited for home and pushed on. I got home around noon on Monday, and was greeted by my roommate and her boyfriend. I told them a little about my trip as they helped me carry up some of my luggage. The rest of the luggage would have to wait until the next day, though, as my body realized we were home and it was okay to be tired. I was so happy to be home!